


Something More

by agentmercury, s4linger



Category: Paradise Lost - John Milton
Genre: F/M, Satan/Eve, p sure this might win me a first class first place ticket to hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:58:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2733416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmercury/pseuds/agentmercury, https://archiveofourown.org/users/s4linger/pseuds/s4linger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But is that all you want to be?" Satan/Eve</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something More

**Author's Note:**

> s4linger was reading Paradise Lost for class and she texted me (in short), "What if Satan went beyond being entranced by Eve's innocence while she was seduced by his promise of more knowledge?"
> 
> I am only implementing it in as best [and yet inevitably haphazard] a fashion as I can. She pointed out this is like the ultimate Bad Boy-Good Girl, which sold me entirely, _and_  she tightened just about everything my loose fingers touched.
> 
> Which led to... this. Waiting in my secret bunker for hellfire.

"What do you see, down there?"

The voice is sweet, but not in the way birdsong or apples are sweet. It is sweet like syrup flowing as it is tapped out of tree veins, oozing thick and low with the crooning that puts the unwilling to sleep. Eve finds the voice unfamiliar but is not afraid for Paradise is safe. God said there is nothing to fear and so it is.

Forgetting there is  _one_  danger wandering, Eve is reluctant to look up from the pool and away from her glorious image, so she doesn’t. “Beauty,” she sighs, fingering her thick black mane. It puts the pelts of black panthers to shame.

"Oh, is that all?" He sounds far from impressed.

She stiffens. “Is there anything else?”

He does not ask to approach, but when he moves, he is far from silent. His uneven steps accompany the heavy sound of dragging across lush fallen leaves.

And when he settles next to her, her first impression comes from his profile in rippled reflection - golden, bruised, tattered wings. Eve suspects his lips curl even in ill moods for surely this hobbling angel knows the depths of tempests like the one that had rocked the heavens a few nights before.

He, in fact, reminds her of the sun invading the horizon.

She asks, “Don’t you think I’m beautiful?”

Satan only looks at her from the corners of his eyes out of fear his heart would fail. He had sworn to his fallen brethren that he would doom Mankind, but he had forgotten that they had been crafted with the Father in mind.

And He is glorious. The image quivers in his mind and he closes his eyes to better experience what he will never be able to touch short of supplication or death. He would have better luck looking at the sun or diving into it without being consumed.

The lingering taste becomes bitter and curdles memory. The Woman, to his relief, looks less palatable - just smooth flesh that contours everywhere he would like to touch.

"You are beautiful," he says, trying not to mean it too much.

Eve flicks a stray lock of hair back over her shoulder. She supports herself on an elbow and, so reclined, looks directly at him for the first time. She tilts her head. His eyes are cages she cannot see inside. “But?”

Gazing back at her, he asks, “What does it mean if you only think yourself beautiful?”

She shrugs. What else is there? “You think I’m beautiful, too. It is there for you to see, is it not? It is fact, like the contents of this pool,” she dips her finger and flicks the water at her companion, “are wet.”

"Beauty rests on you and does nothing."

 ”So?” 

Lucifer fell from heaven and collapsed into Satan because the Father intended Mankind to inherit his world - and this is His promised people? The Son had not casted him down for this. The hoard of fallen angels building Pandaemonium had not lost their heavenliness for this.  
  
Beauty and all the graceful innocence that tortures him cannot be as shallow as this pool. He had watched her these past hours, how she maneuvered Adam elsewhere to suit her wishes. She is more than her skin and so, by the Hell burning ever steady within him and its growing fervor, he can make her do more than fall. She will jump, collide, crash.  
  
"But is that  _all_  you want to be?” he says.

"You speak as if you know of something more."

Intrigued, Eve stirs the surface of the pool with her index finger, blurring her image until she can believe she can be a large dark cat resting after its time on the prowl.

Something else. Is this all she wants, these solitary days and the nights with Adam? The idea of  _more_ flutters in her chest. “What more can I be?”

He stands. Looking down at her, this young chrysalis bursting at the seams with unmined potential, Satan finds her wanting. Like him and everything the Father brought to life, carelessly imbued with free will, she is pruned, only half of what she can be.

The first cloud cover shadows him, so Eve cannot see how his ruthless anger quakes beneath his composure.

The Tree is a loud consciousness behind him, its boughs heavy with uneaten fruit. He considers its potential as his weapon, his tool, and it helps ripen his fury into a conviction.

Just as he instigated the building of Tartarus and rallied his army of fallen angels, he will recreate the Woman, recast Mankind, craft them with his bare hands.

Satan holds one out. “Come and see.”

She takes it.


End file.
